Members in the Media

“We can only speculate what they mean and wonder just what adaptive advantage the (songs) may give the whales in their evolution.”Roger Bland, San Francisco State University, UPI, August 9, 2010.

“To me, this challenges the integrity of science…They say they reached these conclusions that have enormous consequences on the political and international stage. As a scientist and scholar, I felt it was my duty to check their conclusion.”Seung-Hun Lee, University of Virginia, on why he disagrees with the South Korean government’s assessment that a North Korean torpedo sank the battleship Cheonan in March, Time, August 18, 2010.

“Maybe the huge black holes at the center of the Milky Way and other galaxies are bridges to different universes.”Nikodem Poplawski, Indiana University in Bloomington, The Washington Post, August 24, 2010.

“The Earth is 4.7 billion years old and it has taken that long to accumulate helium reserves, which we will dissipate in about 100 years… One generation does not have the right to determine availability for ever.”Robert Richardson, Cornell, UPI, August 24, 2010.

“It’s an effect that no one yet understands…Theorists are starting to say, ‘What’s going on?’ But that’s what the evidence points to. It’s a challenge for the physicists and a challenge for the solar people too.”Peter Sturrock, Stanford, on mysterious variations observed in radioactive decay that might be tied to the sun, The Atlantic.com, August 25, 2010.

“It’s really about the question: to whom does the American Dream belong? Does it belong to all of us, or a privileged few?”Rush Holt, US House of Representatives, running for reelection, The Star-Ledger, September 3, 2010.

“It is perhaps a bit rich for Hawking to make God redundant after granting him/her/it a celebrity cameo at the end of his multimillion-­selling ‘A Brief History of Time’.”Graham Farmelo, Science Museum, London, The Daily Telegraph, September 3, 2010.

“When dropped into a new environment, rats will explore for a while, form a mental map, then stop wondering. But humans ask, ‘Why am I in this cage? How did I get here? Where’s the nearest decent coffee?’ To understand cosmology is to understand where we fit in.”Leonard Mlodinow, Caltech, The New York Post, September 5, 2010.